Competences supporting service innovation

EPISIS (European Policies and Instruments to Support Service Innovation) is a project under the PRO-INNO Europe initiative of the Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry. It promotes the development of service innovations at policy, strategic and operational levels through transnational cooperation between policy-makers and innovation agencies. The EPISIS Consortium consists of the leading European public authorities including Tekes (Finland, the Coordinator), BIS (the UK), DASTI (Denmark), PT-DLR (Germany) and Vinnova (Sweden).

The present report is a contribution to the European strategy thus focusing on mapping the new skills and competences required to support service innovation. It is essential that European countries recognize and develop the necessary skills and competences to unleash the transformative capacity of services, i.e. to support service innovation in order to raise productivity, create value as well as new market opportunities. EPSIS Task Force 4 (TF4) focuses on service innovation which can and should be applied to address challenges, for example, maintaining a competitive industry and develop sustainable cities.